Today we are brain washed with dichotomies – you are “healthy” and exist on nothing but salad, protein and gluten free carbs (if any), working out every day and imbibing moderate to non-existent quantities of alcohol. Or you are off the wagon, drinking too much and not exercising at all. Neither is necessarily healthy. We are so disconnected from our physicals bodies – we have been brought up in a society that primarily worships the mental body – that we aren’t able to listen to them and give them what they know they need to keep healthy. And boy, are our bodies wise.
The body has more wisdom than our minds and a hell of a lot more than the health and diet industry that manufactures all the propaganda we have grown dependent on to tell us how to live. An industry keeping us in a prison of guilt and shame for not following rules that they have made up. Our health is their last priority.
In the West, we supposedly rebuke political propaganda. We view it as fraudulent and evil. But we swallow the propaganda of the food and diet industry that dictates so many ever-changing rules. Why? Because of a little something called science. Science is modern day religion. It is something that helps a lot of people feel safe. It helps a lot of people put their faith in something other than themselves. It gives a lot of people something to spend their time thinking about.
Diet Propaganda
I did a Biochemistry degree from an institution worth their salt. And the main thing I took away from it was that one can engineer any experiment to give you results that will support any hypothesis you want to push. I wrote my thesis on GABA signaling in Schizophrenia and Autism, and the hardest part about it was finding conclusive evidence to support the hypothesis I was defending. For every paper proving one thing, there were just as many proving the very opposite.
Science, and “evidence”, is the crutch many like to lean against to help them navigate the fear instilled in them by living in such a cruel and unloving world. Evidence can be thought of as data and circumstances repeated enough times in unbiased conditions, thus making something true. Yet, the areas of interest in which there has accrued the most evidence, aren’t necessarily the areas of interest that are truest: but the areas of interest in which the most money has been injected to make said evidence come about.
Cures for cancer, for example. Pharmaceutical companies pump money into cancer research so that there is lots of EVIDENCE that their drug will cure cancer. People are willing to spend lots of money on buying that cure because of FEAR. We get cancer because it has been sold to us through advertising and scare mongering.
What he said.
More money = more research = more evidence = more true?
Why isn’t there more money put into things like researching the healing properties of naturally occurring substances like plants? Because natural medicines would compete with the synthetic ones that make the pharmaceutical companies their big bucks. Why isn’t there more research put into the benefits of meditation? Because meditation is free and every living person has access to it – meditation cannot be sold. Money cannot be made from people meditating. Fine, you could spend money buying a guided meditation CD… but for the most part, organizations who teach meditation do not charge, rather survive off donations.
Why do we need evidence anyway? What happened to intuition and listening to our bodies to guide us to responsible choices? But that’s a topic for another time.
Want to change the world? Meditate.
Back to science, and food and diet propaganda. Science based evidence is what makes us believe certain foods are healthy and certain foods are not healthy. Yet, if there really is such a thing as conclusive evidence and absolute truths… would we not have sussed this whole health and weight thing already? Why do health fads exist and why do different food types become fashionable with the coming of a new year? To make the diet industry money. It sure as hell isn’t for the good of our health. The reason so much money is currently being injected into obesity research is so that the diet industry can flourish. Diet programs need to fail to supply the industry with repeat customers, as Melissa Fabello says so eloquently here.
I don’t believe in diets or health food or anything the media (which includes our school textbooks) has fed us about what is good for you and how to lose weight and how to get fit. I have my own person inklings of what might be at play, but those are based on very personal observations. Each person is a unique work of art that requires it’s very own life plan of eating, drinking and exercising.
But even if someone has broken every health rule in the supposed book – why does this matter? Why should they feel guilt and shame and be shunned by a society that decrees that everyone needs to have a prototypical body? The fact we are alive means we are awesome and perfect enough. Time we start teaching ourselves how to love our bodies (that’s where the Militant Baker and other kick ass chicks come in).
I spent a decade of my life hating my body, feeling guilty, exercising and starving myself. I was well and truly brain washed by expectations that weren’t mine but ones I took on as my own because as a human being, I (and you) don’t actually have complete free will, no matter how fiercely we believe we do. That can be changed. Let’s start living our very own diet democracy and dictate what foods we eat and drink to make us feel healthy and happy.
Your life, your rules
Think I’m talking shit? I would love to hear what you think…
